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Music-box figurines provide one metaphor during the opening titles, another comes later from lyrics warbled in a moving convertible, "a toy balloon that's fated soon to pop." Sunrise sees each side of the quartet separately, the Broadway songstress (Madeline Kahn) glides on champagne to introduce the technique of elaborate, uninterrupted takes. (The Ophüls of La Ronde is as much a foundation as the Lubitsch of The Love Parade.) Bored moneybags (Burt Reynolds) is her mate, strapped heiress (Cybill Shepherd) and Venetian gambler (Duilio Del Prete) are the parallel couple. "Change partners!" The romantic complications are worked out on checkerboard floors and limousine backseats, meanwhile the valet (John Hillerman) finds his unflappability tested by the amorous confidante (Eileen Brennan). "Are you singing to me, sir?" "No, I was... just singing to myself." "Yes, sir. Go right ahead, sir." Peter Bogdanovich luxuriating on Cole Porter, a New Hollywood séance for Art Deco insouciance, a documentary on modernist awkwardness exposed rather than concealed by classical artifice. Racetracks and powder rooms, tuxedos and cavemen. "Theatricality, my dear, is your department." Eighteen songs, ping-ponging repartee segueing into melodies to the bravura enjoyment of the actors. "You're the Top" and "Well, Did You Evah," "De-Lovely" and "Let's Misbehave," "Just One of Those Things" and "I Get a Kick Out of You," performance and commentary simultaneously in a lavish karaoke session. The celluloid Thirties as an incantation of affecting clumsiness, fabricated facsimiles and authentic melancholy for a lost genre. "Is it a cocktail, this feeling of joy / Or is what I feel the real McCoy?" Scorsese (New York, New York) and Coppola (One from the Heart) run with the vituperated experiment. With Mildred Natwick, M. Emmet Walsh, Burton Gilliam, and Liam Dunn.
--- Fernando F. Croce |